Talk:Conversation

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If you can provide a precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Conversation.

• (wife) "Are you listening to me?" -(Steve Sayles)"yes"-(wife)" Well you are not looking at me"-(Steve Sayles) "I listen to the radio, but I don't sit looking at it!" (2004)
  • Steve Sayles

• The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.
  • Anonymous

• The less men think, the more they talk.
  • Charles de Montesquieu

• Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
  • G. A. Sala, Benjamin Franklin, or Dorothy Neville

• The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive.
  • Fran Lebowitz

• One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, The original text may be in French.

• The extreme pleasure we take in talking of ourselves should make us fear that we give very little to those who listen to us.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, The original text may be in French.

• Speak little and well if you wish to be considered as possessing merit. (original: French)
  • French proverb

• If you want to talk with an idiot, you have to talk like an idiot.
  • Glenn Howard

• Amongst such as out of cunning hear all and talk little, be sure to talk less; or if you must talk, say little.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, The original text may be in French.

• There is speaking well, speaking easily, speaking justly and speaking seasonably: It is offending against the last, to speak of entertainments before the indigent; of sound limbs and health before the infirm; of houses and lands before one who has not so much as a dwelling; in a word, to speak of your prosperity before the miserable; this conversation is cruel, and the comparison which naturally arises in them betwixt their condition and yours is excruciating.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, The original text may be in French.

• Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name of conversation.
  • Laurence Sterne

• Verbal ability is a highly overrated thing in a guy, and it's our pathetic need for it that gets us into so much trouble.
  • Nora Ephron

• Never hold any one by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.
  • Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

• In my whole life I have only known ten or twelve persons with whom it was pleasant to speak—i.e., who keep to the subject, do not repeat themselves, and do not talk of themselves; men who do not listen to their own voice, who are cultivated enough not to lose themselves in commonplaces, and, lastly, who possess tact and good taste enough not to elevate their own persons above their subjects.
  • Prince Clemens Wenzel of Metternich

• There are three things in speech that ought to be considered before some things are spoken—the manner, the place and the time.
  • Southey

• The secret of tiring is to say everything that can be said on the subject.
  • Voltaire, The original text may be in French.